Micro 4/3Olympus "Bulb Mode Live View"

Legend

I don't understand why no one is talking about this AWESOME new feature in the EM5. It's a dream come true for long exposure junkies or light painters. Here's a brief description of how it works.....

"In Bulb Mode Live View you can literally see the exposure unfold during a bulb mode sequence. In the past (as in before this feature was available), shooting in bulb mode was pretty much a ‘best guess’ affair, you’ll never know what you’ll get.

With this new Bulb Mode Live View mode, you activate it and you’ll see exactly what has been recorded in real-time on the OM-D’s LCD. You know exactly when to stop when you get the exposure you want, no matter how long your shutter stays open!"

All-Pro

Veteran

I don't understand why no one is talking about this AWESOME new feature in the EM5. It's a dream come true for long exposure junkies or light painters. Here's a brief description of how it works.....

"In Bulb Mode Live View you can literally see the exposure unfold during a bulb mode sequence. In the past (as in before this feature was available), shooting in bulb mode was pretty much a ‘best guess’ affair, you’ll never know what you’ll get.

With this new Bulb Mode Live View mode, you activate it and you’ll see exactly what has been recorded in real-time on the OM-D’s LCD. You know exactly when to stop when you get the exposure you want, no matter how long your shutter stays open!"

Regular

Hall of Famer

Yeah, that's an incredibly useful function, good to see Olympus bring some innovation to the game. The funny thing is, a few days ago I was thinking that it should be possible to make something like this, and literally the very next day, Olympus announced it!

Well that's only 50 seconds and since the longest timed (non-bulb) exposure is 60 seconds, cannot see the point of this. It is the duration of the exposure that is of most importance, not what happed after half a second.

~@¿@~

I don't understand why no one is talking about this AWESOME new feature in the EM5. It's a dream come true for long exposure junkies or light painters. Here's a brief description of how it works.....

"In Bulb Mode Live View you can literally see the exposure unfold during a bulb mode sequence. In the past (as in before this feature was available), shooting in bulb mode was pretty much a ‘best guess’ affair, you’ll never know what you’ll get.

With this new Bulb Mode Live View mode, you activate it and you’ll see exactly what has been recorded in real-time on the OM-D’s LCD. You know exactly when to stop when you get the exposure you want, no matter how long your shutter stays open!"

Legend

Well that's only 50 seconds and since the longest timed (non-bulb) exposure is 60 seconds, cannot see the point of this. It is the duration of the exposure that is of most importance, not what happed after half a second.

From my understanding, you can change it to AS OFTEN as every half second. But it doesn't need to be that often. So you can estimate the length of the exposure and then set the refresh rate base on that. If you estimate a 30 second exposure.....every 1/2 second would be a good interval.

One of my contacts posted this shot...... Front & Center {Explore} | Flickr - Photo Sharing! recently and I asked him how he arrived at a 457 second exposure. "Trial and error" was basically his response, but imagine if you could estimate it being around a 5 or 6 minute exposure and then monitor it every 10 seconds? Kind of takes out a lot of the guess work. Obviously the end end result is what matters, but seeing the process would certainly help for extreme long exposures and just in general for people who are newer to long exposure photography.

Legend

This camera keeps doing that. The IBIS looks amazing, the high ISO looks much better than expected, the tone curve looks pretty cool for as long as I shoot jpegs with it, this bulb mode live view will likely get me to try this type of photography again (haven't really played around with it since the film days) are all stupid-grin inducing. The combination of tilt-screen and one touch shooting is something I may or may not end up using a lot, but seems like for street shooting it MIGHT be a holy grail of sorts - don't know for sure, but I'm damn sure gonna find out. The relatively quiet shutter. Overall, I'm wicked psyched about this beast. Only the EVF location/size leaves me less than thrilled and I can live with it.

So, stupid grins all around - I hope it'll take more than a week or two before I take it all for granted!